AMERICAN SNIPER SNUBBED: The Oscars Dis The Biggest Film Of The Year
The Academy prefers to give awards to obscure films that make barely any money at the box office.
The Oscar Awards went to obscure movies with poor box office ratings as experts accuse the Academy of snubbing popular productions once more.
American Sniper, which earned more at the box office than all of the other seven Best Picture nominees combined, took home just one statuette for sound editing.
The LEGO Movie, the highest grossing animation of 2014, wasn’t even nominated – a snub which was alluded to on the red carpet as stars were handed Lego awards.
Perhaps the biggest snub of the night was critically-acclaimed Boyhood, which took 12 years to make but lost out on Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor. Its one gong went to Patricia Arquette.
The collective box office performance of the films nominated for best picture was the worst for decades, standing at just $605 million. Over half that figure was earned by American Sniper’s $312 million.
This year’s winner, Birdman, took a measly $36million at the box office, nominee Boyhood just $25million and Selma $48million, according to The Times.
These are still large sums of money, but are dwarfed by the takings of previous Oscar nominees. For instance Avatar took $2.7billion in 2009 and Titantic $2.1billion in 1997.
And in 2010, the films shortlisted took $4.7billion worldwide.
Read more: Daily Mail